Online Document Vault Opens

Bill Ho, founder and CEO of Web-based document delivery company vVault, Inc., dreamed up his company after his brother lost a briefcase and with it his passport, airline tickets, itinerary, Travelers Cheques and documents while on a business trip.

Ho said the situation sparked an idea: that his brother could have expedited the replacement of his documents if he had stored electronic copies on the Web. Hence the name, vVault­ basically a virtual safe deposit box, Ho says.

Customers can access their Web-saved documents from Palm VII and Palm V devices, or from a Wireless Application Protocol-enabled wireless phone.

The user simply turns on his or her phone or PDA, types in "vVault," enters the user name and password, and selects the desired file name. Then the document can be sent to a fax machine or an e-mail address, or it can be viewed on the handheld device's screen. Want to deposit a file in the vault? Simply fax it in.

The service is called vVault Anywhere, and it is available now for personal or business customers. The service, which currently has about 500 users, is one of several document-delivery solutions that taps into the use of wireless phones for anywhere, anytime access to personal information. All vVault documents reside on the vVault servers in the company's data center and require "essentially zero" IT effort to get up and running.

Besides vVault, Xerox Mobile Solutions, a unit of business equipment and systems giant Xerox, announced last month that its remote control document-delivery platform called MobileDoc is certified for the Motorola PageWriter 2000X and will be offered through WebLink Wireless. The service also is certified for use on the upgraded PageWriter, now called the TimePort P930.

Illustrating its potential to run on wireless phones, the service is available in Europe via the Nokia 9100 Communicator. It will be available as an enhanced service on the Nokia 7100 series later this year.

The Xerox Mobile Solutions MobileDoc documents reside on a networked desktop computer, and the server resides behind the corporate firewall. MobileDoc is based on Windows NT and can be updated wirelessly and managed from a PC.

Yet another company, eFax.com, said last week that it also plans to become a digital content courier, using WAP phones as its access device. This service, accessed through eFax.com, also will enable users to send digital documents to the e-mail addresses or fax machines of their choice. This company is targeting the mobile business market.

"I think the vision, certainly long term, is to be able to zap print jobs to any printer any place, anywhere," says Paula Bursely, an analyst at Dataquest. "The idea of the portable printer never really took off and making printing portable in a different way, allowing people to print wherever they are via wireless technology, would be something that we would see in the future."

Ken Hyers, a wireless analyst for Cahners In-Stat Group (like Wireless Week, owned by Cahners Business Information), said he believes that as companies rely less and less on administrative staff for office assistance, business professionals could have greater need for remote document delivery capabilities.

"However, I do think that the market is limited," he says. "I doubt there's much room for more than one company to target each market.

Xerox, Hyers thinks, has the name recognition and business base that will give it an edge among large corporate customers that want to use its server-based product. If he's right about that, vVault or eFax.com services may be among the first to reach the personal and small-business market.

Then maybe business travelers with lost luggage can spend more time replacing toothbrushes and underwear than recovering documents.